Across the universities of this country, students are questioning old arrangements, and how organizations choose to spend their money.
Students are questioning whether their collective investments, as campuses and as student bodies, have truly brought value back to their communities, whether they truly have proven worthy of the investment.
This is the time for students to demand accountability, fairness, and equity from all organizations that purport to deserve their money. That’s the aim of Carleton University Students for Accountability, Fairness, and Equity (CUSAFE).
We’re an organization that will fight for accountability from every organization that claims to deserve levy money from the student body by virtue of the work it does.
Whether an organization charges students $1 or $1,000, we believe absolutely no one has the right to play fast and loose with our money. Every organization that collects money from the public must be accountable to the public as to how they are spending their money and why that spending helps every student.
We judge organizations not by the honeyed words and speeches of their representatives, but by their deeds and actions on our campus. Because it’s one thing to claim to deliver a service, and claim to deliver it in a proper and efficient way, and quite another to actually do it.
CUSAFE will sift through the claims made by levy organizations in order to show students how their investments are really being used on their campus.
The tide of accountability started with Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) Opt Out Week. Throughout the week, we have tabled and launched campaigns designed to make students aware of how their levy money is being spent by OPIRG. The levy is easy to opt out of and important to every student who has concerns about the group.
And as with any organization, we choose to judge OPIRG by its deeds, not by its words. OPIRG claims their primary objective is funding progressive activism on campus.
What have OPIRG’s deeds been? Well, in 2012-13, out of a total undergraduate levy revenue of $127,780, they spent $79,112 on wages, and $5,500 on consulting fees.
They spent $3,000 on progressive working groups, $2,000 on Radical Frosh, and another $6,000 on programming.
These are the groups that form the core of OPIRG’s supposed work on campus, and yet their funding doesn’t even come close to the budget OPIRG spends on wages.
CUSAFE is holding them accountable, we’re saying that their rhetoric does not match the action enumerated in their budget.
There are some people who may accuse CUSAFE of having a political agenda or siding with one side of the political spectrum over another. To this I will give a very simple response. Accountability knows no party, fairness bows to no leader, and equity has no clique.
Left, right, and in between, we should all be united in demanding that our student organizations be held to high standards, and spend students’ money in a way that benefits every student.
